On 7/7/2024 8:58 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Jul 6, 2024 at 3:03 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
/> // I think such foresight is a necessary component of
intelligence, not a "byproduct"./
I agree, I can detect the existence of foresight in others and so can
natural selection, and that's why we have it. It aids in getting our
genes transferred into the next generation. But I was talking about
consciousness not foresight, and regardless of how important we
personally think consciousness is, from evolution's point of view it's
utterly useless, and yet we have it, or at least I have it. Why? It
must be because consciousness is the byproduct of something else
You miss my point. I thought it was obvious that foresight requires
consciousness. It requires the ability of think in terms of future
scenarios in which you are an actor, i.e. to be conscious of yourself
with an imaginary play.
Brent
that is not useless, there are no other possibilities. Incidentally,
GPT has demonstrated foresight, when shown a picture of somebody
holding a pair of scissors next to a string holding down a helium
balloon and asked "what comes next?" it replies that the string is
about to be cut by the scissors and then the balloon will float away.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>
hbf
Anybody who claims that philosophical zombies are possible needs
to ask themselves one question.Natural selection cannot select
for something it cannot see, and it can't directly see
consciousness any better than we can, except in ourselves; so how
did Evolution manage to produce at least one conscious being, and
probably many billions of them? I think the answer is that
although Evolutioncan't see consciousness it can certainly see
intelligent activity, so consciousness must be an inevitable
byproduct of intelligence.
I
Or to put it another way, it's a brute fact that consciousness is
the way data feels when it is being processed. After all, without
exception, every iterated sequence of "why" or "how" questions
either goes on forever or terminates in a brute fact.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>
wfn
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